PPC Without Pity

Now here’s something interesting. Google just released a beta test in the UK and Canada for a new AdWords keyword match type: modified broad match keywords. These new keywords work kind of like broad match, but allow you to demand greater specificity in relevance matches by adding the “+” modifier in front of keywords that must appear in the user’s search query. For example, if you were flexible with what keywords you wanted to trigger your ads, but you were absolutely sure that you only wanted search queries that contained the exact word “cruise,” you could add modified broad match keywords like “discount +cruise,” “bahamas +cruise,” or “+cruise vacations.” In this scenario, your ads would show if someone typed in the query “caribbean cruise,” but they would not show if the same user typed in “discount vacations.”

This new functionality bridges the gap between broad match and phrase match, allowing greater granularity in your targeting options. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of broad match unless you’re willing to waste some money. In real life, searchers type in all sorts of crazy queries that Google matches to your ads. This is good if you want to get some real-world keyword research, but bad if you want to keep your cost per conversion down. Google is undoubtedly good at search, but I’m very unimpressed by their ability to match broad match queries to relevant broad match keywords. If you don’t believe me, check a long-term search query report for some broad match keywords and try to figure out what percentage of those queries have nothing to do with your product offering. Unless you’ve been really good about keeping up with your negative keyword list, chances are you’ll be looking at a lot of junk traffic.

The new modified broad match keywords present an alternative to the regular broad match/large negative keyword list combo. Now, you can get the benefit of catching misspellings, plurals, and long-tail terms you hadn’t thought of in your search net, while still keeping some semblance of quality control with the modified “+” keyword. Sure, it’s not going to fix the problem entirely, but it could save you from some common pitfalls of the other match types. You won’t miss out on too much traffic like you would with a phrase match, and you won’t drive quite as much junk traffic, as you might experience with a standard broad match.

I’d love to give this new trick a spin, but alas, I’m American. I suppose that I have to miss out on the fun for now. If you’re a United Kingdom or Canadian AdWords advertiser, I’d love to hear about your experiences with the new match type. Let’s hear about it in the comments.

The new Google Analytics app gallery was announced this week, and boy does it look like a lot of fun. I’m an avowed Google Analytics fanboy, so this feels like Christmas to me. I haven’t had a chance to try out any of the apps yet, but I appreciate what Google is doing by allowing analytics geeks like you and me to monkey around with their system and come up with some creative uses. I’ve always thought that the Google Analytics program was pretty open to start with – you can easily create segmentation, user funnels, and custom tagging if you’re a savvy enough webmaster.

The app gallery takes the open platform to the next logical step. By allowing independent developers to create useful apps that link into existing Google Analytics accounts, big G is making their useful (and free) analytics platform even more useful. Here’s a quick rundown of some apps that caught my eye:

Call Tracking – No specific mentions here, but I think it’s nice that the app gallery has an entire section devoted to call tracking apps. Keeping tabs on offline conversions is always a real pain for the serious online marketer, but you might find that some of the apps here give you relief. Of course, you’ll probably still need to deal with the hassle of setting up multiple 800 numbers to keep track of the calls coming in from different marketing channels. But, being able to get all of your data from offline and online sources in a single dashboard, from PPC to SEO to phone calls, is a real time-saver if you’re dealing with a large volume of conversions.

Analytics Visualizations – You probably already know that I’m a pretty big PPC geek. Well, I’m a data visualization geek, too. Infographics get me excited. I have two signed books by Edward Tufte on my bookshelf. And I think that this data visualization app looks really cool. Google Analytics already has some decent data visualization capabilities, but Analytics Visualizations really takes it to the next level. Right now, there are two options for visualizations: referrer flow and keyword tree. Referrer flow shows a linear visualization of traffic to your site, with individual pages segmented and color coded by page. You can even apply filters to drill down to greater areas of specificity. The keyword tree tool looks pretty nice, too. It takes your search queries and creates a structured word cloud to visualize both the search volume of the keyword, and how it related hierarchically with other user queries. Both tools are free, and a whole lot of fun to play around with.

Pion – Well, now this is interesting. Pion offers an app that lets your forgo the tagging system in Google Analytics for an easier installation with more complete data. The Pion analytics app doesn’t use javascript tagging like a normal Google Analytics installation. Instead, you install Pion on your web server, tell it your GA unique ID, and it communicates directly to your Google Analytics account what’s going on with your web traffic. It’s an interesting concept, and could be really helpful if you tend to make a lot of new pages and don’t want to bother with checking every single one for correctly installed Google Analytics code. I haven’t tried it, though, so I can’t vouch for its accuracy. Anyone out there have any experiences or opinion?

Some apps are paid, but many are either free or have a free “lite” version of the paid app. I encourage you to check around and see if there’s something you can use. The app selection is a bit sparse right now, but that’s to be expected for a brand new marketplace. In time, I’m sure we’ll see dozens of really cool apps show up. So keep an eye out – you may find a Google Analytics app that serves the purpose you’ve been looking for.

Good news, everybody! This Friday, Google released their new mobile phone interface for AdWords to all users. Now, you can check up on your account, and make tedious account edits on a three-inch screen!

Okay, maybe I should dial back the sarcasm a little bit. Sure, this is a great tool if you really need to check up on your account on-the-go. But, I can’t imagine doing any serious PPC work on my iPhone. I’m spoiled as it is using two LCD monitors for even the most mundane of pay-per-click marketing tasks. Not to mention the fact that I’m usually flipping back and forth between multiple browser and Excel spreadsheet windows…

That being said, this should be a great feature for anyone who really needs to keep tabs on their account at all times. By allowing you to check up on your account quickly and easily, Google is making sure its advertisers don’t make any potentially dangerous snafus that end up costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Admit it – we’ve all had at least one of these in our PPC careers. It might be nice to have that little safeguard to assuage the paranoia.

I do find the interface a little unwieldy to make changes. But that is to be expected with the kind of spatial limitations Google is working with by creating a mobile site. Smartphones were never designed to do something as data-intensive as PPC. It’s nice to be able to change a bid or two on the fly, but I think I’d rather wait to get to a computer if I’m going to have to change text ads or multiple campaign settings.

The trick is to log in to your AdWords account on your computer beforehand and set up appropriate filters to cut down on the information overload. You probably don’t need to be checking in on all of your account on your phone, but maybe you have a new ad group or two that needs extra special attention. If you set up filters containing only these special groups ahead of time, you can select the filter on your smartphone to go straight to them. Scrolling through hundreds of keywords and ad groups looks like a total pain in this interface, so I’d recommend that you get on top of your filters right away if you think you’re going to be using the mobile site in the future.

I’d go into some more how-to’s on this site, but Google has already produced a pretty slick video that goes over the basics. Check it out:

This week, WordStream released a new set of keyword tools for SEO. This toolset is great for SEO marketers, but it’s handy to have for us PPC folks as well. I spoke with Larry Kim, founder and VP of Product Development for WordStream, about the new tools.

1. The new set of keyword tools looks great for SEO, but what can it do for PPC managers?

You can definitely use these tools for pay-per-click marketing if you’re on a budget. Effective PPC campaigns are built on strong keyword research and organization, and the advanced keyword discovery, keyword research, grouping, and analysis features in WordStream for SEO cover a lot of the groundwork you’ll need to do before you create your campaigns.

In addition, the new WordStream SEO for Firefox plug-in, a content creation tool, is great for landing page creation. Sometimes, writers do keyword research with the best of intentions but abandon that research when they’re actually writing copy. The plugin helps marketers follow through on their research to ensure that landing pages are targeted and keyword optimized. Ideally you want to ensure that the page you send your traffic to matches up closely with the user’s original search query – and by doing this you can significantly improve Quality Score and conversion rates.

That said, serious PPC marketers will probably want to check out the additional functionality that’s available in our PPC solution.

2. I see a mention of keyword analytics in your press release. Could you go into more detail on how that works?

We believe that the traffic volume estimates in traditional keyword tools should be treated as directionally indicative of search volume but not necessarily accurate or precise. The only way to know for sure if a keyword is valuable for you is to test it out on your site and in your search campaigns. The keyword analytics in WordStream for SEO are predicated on this idea that your search marketing efforts should be based on both estimated and real data. This is accomplished in one of two ways: You can either use the WordStream JavaScript tracker to capture ongoing keyword and traffic data for your site, or sync your account up with Google Analytics. Either way, your numbers are always up-to-date and accurate.

3. Where do you get your keyword data for in this new tool?

Relative frequency is our estimate of how often a particular keyword is searched on. A higher relative frequency means that the keyword is searched on more frequently, relative to other keywords in your list. We derive this data (both the keywords and the frequency estimates) by applying various statistical models on keyword data obtained through industry partnerships (described here).

Of course some of the best keyword data comes from your own Web analytics. And that’s why WordStream SEO for Firefox can be configured to work using your own saved, historical keyword research – so that the data is customized to your own website.

4. What are the advantages to using this new tool over some of the free keyword tool options out there (Google’s keyword tool, Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, etc.)?

This tool does everything that standard keyword research tools do (like traditional keyword discovery and competitive keyword research) but on top of that, we layer on the personalized keyword research, plus analytics, plus content authoring tools. Instead of only covering the first step of SEO (keyword research), we cover the whole process, from finding those keyword opportunities to acting on them to analyzing the results, and we make it easy to repeat the process continually. But it’s still a very affordable platform for budget-minded businesses ($49 a month is the entry price).

5. Thanks for your time! Anything else you’d like to add about the new WordStream offering?

I’ll add that it’s easy to get started. You can download and install the Firefox plugin here. This quick video shows how to use it.

Full disclosure: I’m not receiving compensation or free product from WordStream – I’ve just used their tools in the past and have been pretty impressed by them. They have plenty of free keyword tools on their site for budget-conscious PPC managers, and more robust paid options for those of us that need a more high-powered tool.

When Steve Jobs recently announced iPhone OS 4 (due later this summer), he mentioned that Apple is now getting in to the mobile advertising game with “iAd,” an in-house platform for developers to create ads on mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Ads on Apple mobile devices are old news, but a huge technology company jumping headfirst into the booming mobile advertising space is a significant development indeed. With over 50 million iPhones and about half a million iPads sold to date, Apple already has a captive audience and a significant user base. Now, it looks like they are about to bring their trademark efficiency and innovation to the ad space as well.

I think that one of the most significant things to note about this development is who Apple is trying to crowd out of this space – Google. It’s a pretty big deal when a company as big as Apple decides to go head-to-head with the undisputed king of web advertising in a new space. Google has already made headway into advertising on Apple’s devices. AdWords users have been able to target iPhones for quite some time now, and Google just announced iPad targeting this month as well. Plus, Google beat Apple to the purchase of AdMob last October, giving them a huge inside track to in-app advertising. Clearly, Apple has not been too happy about these developments, and is likely going to take steps to push Google’s ads off of its platform. This could get interesting.

The big question is this: can Apple develop a winning ad platform in a space already dominated by experienced, well-funded competitors? Despite Apple’s consistent popularity, they don’t always win at everything they do (Remember Apple TV? Or the hockey puck mouse?). They’re a hardware company about to embark on a significant software venture. Sure, they’ve had tremendous success with the iTunes store and the app store, but those are both consumer-side ventures. Will they be able to repeat their success with an enterprise software service?

Granted, Apple is offering a generous 60/40 ad revenue cut in favor of developers, so that should sweeten the deal to get a large ad network in place fairly quickly. Add in the stories going around about basement software developers making millions from ads on a simple app or game they coded in their spare time, and I’m sure there will be plenty of places for mobile PPC ads to show on Apple’s new network. But, will this offer a good ROI for advertisers? Mobile advertising isn’t for everyone, and I’m still not entirely sold on getting conversion actions out of mobile users yet. Ever try to fill out a lead or purchase form on a smartphone? An ad network is only as good as the ROI it generates, and Apple is making a big bet that mobile ad ROI is going to be good enough for a lot of advertisers to come on board. At least Google and Microsoft have profitable search networks to fall back on while they experiment with mobile advertising. Apple has no such safety net, unless you count the billions of dollars they’re raking in on hardware and media sales.

One last word of advice to Steve Jobs: make sure your reporting and analytics on the ad network are amazing. This is what makes Google great for advertisers, and this is what any fledgling ad network needs to have to stay competitive. Advertisers don’t like it when they can’t get info on where their money is going, and how much money it is bringing in. I know Apple loves to be tight-lipped about information and really stingy with the openness of their platform. This attitude is a recipe for failure in the advertising space.

It’s too early to tell if Apple’s ad platform will revolutionize the industry. But, I think their presence will be big enough and disruptive enough to change the game for everyone. It should be an interesting summer for mobile advertisers.

Like many of you, I’m an avid user of LinkedIn. This week, I got an email in my inbox promoting LinkedIn’s newest innovation – PPC ads targeted to users within their network. They even threw in a free $100 ad credit!

I probably won’t get around to using that credit, since I’m not managing any PPC accounts right now that would benefit from advertising on the LinkedIn PPC network. But, I think that this is a great opportunity for a lot of other PPC marketers out there. Pay per click advertising on the LinkedIn network has two major benefits.

The first advantage is that you are able to get super specific with your demographic targeting. Like all other social networks, LinkedIn has users that voluntarily submit detailed, accurate demographic information about themselves. They even have a significant incentive to do so. After all, if you don’t accurately portray which industry and experience level you’re at in your career, you may miss out on some potentially lucrative job offers or business opportunities.

Advantage number two is that LinkedIn is a very business-focused user group. Other social networks like Facebook and MySpace are full of users that are just there for fun and games. There’s not much purchase intent behind someone checking up on their friend’s birthday party photos from last week. LinkedIn is just the opposite. It’s users are all about the cold, hard cash. This means that if you have a relevant product, and you are able to get your demographic targeting right, chances are much better that you will get that PPC conversion from a LinkedIn ad than if you were to show the same ad on a less business-inclined social network.

I see LinkedIn’s offering as part of a larger trend of social networks getting in on the PPC game. And good for them. Social networks need to monetize their traffic somehow, and pay per click advertisers are always looking for more granular and more accurate demographic targeting – things that social networks are better at than anyone else. Even users get the benefit of only viewing ads that are relevant to their age group, professional aspirations, and interests. Everybody wins at this game.

Have any of you taken LinkedIn up on their offer of free ads? Seen any good results yet? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

There’s an old saying carpenters rely on: “measure twice, cut once.” It means that if you’re going to make a permanent change like cutting a piece of wood, you should double-check your measurements to see if they are accurate. Otherwise, you might have to end up cutting your plank again (assuming you didn’t cut it too short in the first place). It’s sound advice for craftsmen, but I think it’s a helpful maxim for us pay per click marketers as well.

Whenever you are about to make a major change in a PPC account, you need to be absolutely sure that you are considering all of the factors that are affecting that particular aspect of the account. Use reports, analytics data, and your own best judgment before you flip the switch on a potentially game-changing alteration. Remember, they call it “pay per click” for a reason. Even a small mistake could cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars down the road.

Fortunately for us, pay per click marketing is all about measurement. While a carpenter may only have a tape measure in his toolbox, we have a whole arsenal of tools to help gauge success and prevent costly mistakes. Don’t ever assume that you know everything there is to know about your account – double check your numbers, and if you’re making a big change, get a PPC buddy to look at your new account, campaign, or ad group if you can. It’s a lot easier to prevent yourself from making mistake than struggling to fix it after the fact.

Earlier this month, a new startup called Trada launched a new kind of PPC management service. Essentially, they’re crowdsourcing PPC management, connecting advertisers with SEM management needs with PPC experts who are willing to work on the account for the agreed price. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not totally convinced that it’s workable. After doing some research on their service, here are a few issues I found:

1) PPC Experts Get Paid Only When They Meet Advertiser’s Expectations. Trada has a weird way of paying out their PPC experts. An advertiser either sets a specific click cost they want to target, or chooses a conversion cost they need to stay under. If you get clicks or conversions below this target, you get to keep the difference (minus Trada’s 25% cut, of course). There are a few problems with this. First off, clients don’t always have enough expertise in the PPC space to set a reasonable expectation of performance. Back when I worked at an agency, I remember rolling my eyes as a client told me they wanted 100 conversions a month at a dollar per conversion. All this on an account where the average CPC was upwards of $10. As a PPC manager, you need to set up a reasonable expectation for cost per click (based on average bids in a certain keyword niche) and cost per conversion (based on average CPC and expected conversion rate). Trada takes these factors out of the experts hands, and places the goal squarely in the hands of those who may not know what they’re doing. Secondly, letting the client set the price ignores the environmental and competitive factors that go into how much your click and conversion costs are. I’d be happy with a $5.00 CPC if it converted at 10% and had a good ROI, but maybe Joe Client will only accept an average CPC of $0.50, effectively crippling his account. Maybe you get lucky and get a client with PPC experience, but I’m wary that this kind of system may only be appealing to novice PPC users. And lastly, it doesn’t seem like PPC contractors would be able to break even on this model. Sure, you start getting paid after you get click costs a few cents under the client’s (probably low) expectation, but after Trada takes their 25%, you had better be getting thousands of clicks to justify the hours you spent fixing that click cost.

2) Trada Doesn’t Let PPC Contractors Alter Landing Pages. Seriously? Let me be clear on this: you cannot improve PPC account conversion rates without changing landing pages. Landing pages are critical to whether or not users convert – everything else is just driving traffic. Sure, you may be able to eliminate some bad traffic to lower overall CPA, or find new keyword niches to explore to add more total conversions, but you’re never going to see improvement in existing conversion rates unless you rigorously split-test landing pages. Keeping your PPC contractor off of your landing pages is just setting both the client and the contractor up for failure.

3) More Than One PPC Expert Can Work On A Single Account. I’m all for teamwork in PPC strategy, but I think this is a recipe for disaster. On Trada’s homepage, they boast that accounts have an average of 24 PPC experts working on them. Twenty-four! That’s like having twenty-four chefs in one kitchen to bake one muffin. It seems to me like this could set you up for a lot of miscommunication – experts of different skill levels undoing each other’s changes, making changes too often, not doing enough analysis for good results. Not to mention the fact that if you get five PPC experts to look at a single account, they’ll give you ten overall strategies to improve it. This isn’t like stuffing envelopes at home. You can’t do PPC in assembly-line fashion. I’d much rather have one really good PPC contractor working slowly through an account than 24 cheap freelancers making changes at all hours of the day.

Now, I should end this by saying that I don’t think Trada is all bad. They do a few things that I applaud, like requiring all registered PPC experts to have some sort of certification, whether it’s through AdWords, SEMPO, or through their own in-house certification process. And, I recognize that there’s a real need for qualified people to do a lot of the tedious grunt work that comes along with PPC campaigns. This can be very time consuming and expensive for businesses that don’t have a lot of time to devote to SEM, and Trada seems like a good way for these companies to get things done at a discount price. But, as in all things, you get what you pay for. Good PPC service is not cheap. There are no shortcuts, and no substitutes for experience and analytical ability. You can’t just throw a dozen people at a PPC problem and expect it to be resolved.

Would I use Trada for outsourcing my PPC management? Probably not. Instead, I would find a quality freelancer with a solid background in PPC through LinkedIn, eLance, or personal contacts. But, I should end this with a caveat that I have never used Trada’s service and don’t know anyone who has – I’m merely basing my conclusions on their own explanation of the service. I’d love to hear if anyone out there has any experience (good or bad) with Trada’s PPC management service – let’s hear about it in the comments.

On Thursday, the Google Analytics blog announced an upcoming browser-based opt out for Google Analytics tracking. This is huge news for not only webmasters who use Google Analytics tracking, but also on us PPC marketers who rely on this data to make marketing decisions. Details are scarce at this point, but it looks like Google will allow users to opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing a plug-in in their browser. Granted, not every user will be savvy enough to install this on their web browser, or even know what this means. But I’m willing to bet that there are enough web users concerned about their privacy that we’ll start to miss a significant percentage of Google Analytics data once this thing goes live.

This is clearly a reaction to recent uproars about internet privacy, such as last year’s threat to ban Google Analytics in Germany. Google really needed to throw a bone to its critics, and I guess this is it. They are definitely running the risk of incurring the wrath of their PPC advertisers, though.

I must admit I’m a little ambivalent about this development. The internet user in me applauds Google’s advocacy for the privacy of their users. However, the internet marketer in me laments the loss of precious web analytics data that will help me make decisions about my PPC campaigns. But take my opinions with a grain of salt. After all, I am one of those hypocritical marketing types who spends all day managing web ads, then installs ad blockers in his home computer’s web browser.

So will this mean the end of Google Analytics? It’s too early to tell. But once this plug-in situation is finalized, I’ll be interested to see how it affects my Google Analytics data. Keep an eye out for this implementation to make sure you don’t get blindsided by a loss of stats in your own Google Analytics account. If you see the plug-in implementation take a wrecking ball to your site usage data, it might be time to consider a move from Google Analytics to a more complete analytics package like Omiture, Woopra, Yahoo Web Analytics, or any number of other analytics providers. I really like Google Analytics as a tool, but a web analytics package is only as good as the completeness of its data. If Google wants to stand up for privacy at the expense of its advertisers, then I may have to make the painful choice of going with another analytics provider.

Howdy from Austin, Texas! No post this week, since I’ll be out at the South By Southwest Interactive conference all weekend. If you want to meet up and talk PPC, information architecture, or web marketing, send me a direct message on Twitter. My handle is @slivengood.